Today’s Lady News: Teens Are Not Having Babies Like They Used To

Kids: they are not having babies like they used to. The teen birth rate fell to a record low in 2009 in a six percent drop from 2008 figures. It’s the second year in a row that the birth rate among teens has fallen. [Washington Post]

Ladies Shoes Me is a new French dating site where women pick men just like they pick … shoes? WTF? Way to objectify men as just another item for women to consume. [TechCrunch]

“Glee” actress Jane Lynch, a lesbian, and Dan Savage, a gay advice columnist who pioneered the “It Gets Better Project,” open up about the current status of gay rights in the U.S. [Newsweek]

Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg gave a TED talk on why there aren’t more women leaders. [TED]

The New York Observer released a list of the 150 New Yorkers Who Matter and there are only 25 women (16 percent) on it. The list is mostly filled with white men — naturally! — and what few women who are included are white as well. Sexist and racist. Good job, NY Observer. [New York Press]

Gayle King opened up about rumors that she and Oprah are lesbians: “It used to bother me, and now I say, ‘OK, if people believe it, there’s nothing we can do to change their minds.” Oprah has been so outspoken and I have about my dating life, my desire to have a significant other, that it’s just silly that we would deny or hide that because it implies something is wrong. That’s what bothers me more than anything. There’s nothing wrong.” She is “touched” that accusations of their lesbianism brought the big O to tears. [USA Today]

Rebecca Traister, author of Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women and Salon.com’s resident ladyblogger, talks to the women writers’ blog She Writes about how she gets inspiration. [SheWrites]

The irreplaceable Miss Joan Jett opens up to She magazine about “The Runaways” and being a lady in rock ‘n roll: “I figured rock and roll was such a liberated world, no one would have an issue with girls playing rock. But you know, it’s like anything, the glass ceiling is everywhere. Once people realized we were serious about playing in a band and it wasn’t a gimmick, then people started to feel threatened … We just didn’t play into that.” [AfterEllen.com]

Dolly Parton and Julie Andrews will be the recipients of Grammy’s Lifetime Achievement Awards. [Reuters]

Five female-fronted films to look forward to in 2011! [AfterEllen.com]

An Islamic court in Malaysia has ruled that the marriage between an 11-year-old girl and a 41-year-old man (as his fourth wife) is illegal. But the bad news is girls under age 16 in Malaysia are allowed to be married off with the permission of an Islamic court. In this particular case, the girl’s father had not consented and instead the marriage was the result of pressure and threats. [BBC]

Ick: almost 2,000 “treatments” for homosexuality were conducted in Alberta, Canada, between 1995 and 2004 — where being gay is still listed as a mental disorder. And the best part is, taxpayers foot the bill for all this! [Queerty]

A rescue effort to help 20,000 of Nigerian sex slaves who’ve been forced into prostitution allegedly failed because officials from Mali refused to comply. [BBC]

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